Elements of Time: The Broken Cuckoo Clock

By Craig: I sit in the dining room staring at the broken cuckoo clock on the wall. It had been a gift given to me and my wife a few years back. My mother bought it for us in Switzerland. Somehow, about a year ago, the windings got out of whack and I still haven't gotten around to fixing it. I sit at the table poking at my supper and staring at that clock that doesn't work. I am eating a Spanish rice dish that I have concocted with my own blend of seasonings and vegetables. Since I now live alone, when I cook, I make a big vat of food and eat from it for three or four days. It's cheap and it is healthy since I know what ingredients are going into it. I am tempted to get up and rip the cuckoo clock from the wall and tear into it with the intention of fixing it. The room is silent and my two dogs sit on my flanks on my great-grandfathers Persian rug which is under the dining room table and encompasses most of the room. They sit there in silence staring at me...hoping that I am generous with my supper. One of them is an old decrepit dog with a lame paw. He most certainly has some Golden Retriever in him, but the ravages of time have given him bloated look so that the sleekness of the Retriever is now hard to detect. The other dog is much younger. He is black and well formed  like a whippet. They peer at me with their black marble eyes and when I raise my fork to my mouth their hungry gaze follows the fork waiting for a morsel to come their way.

"You've been fed." I state simply as if they understand my English.
Still, I throw them each a piece of buttered bread and they snap them up greedily, swallowing it whole.
"In the mouth, directly to the stomach!" I declare.




    
      The room is dimly lit. It is dark outside, and a little chilly. I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge sitting here all alone in the dark in my flannels and stocking cap. I look again at the broken cuckoo clock and a strange thought floats into my head.
"What if all the clocks in the world stopped?...Would time stop?"
It was a ridiculous question since I already knew the answer.
"Of course time wouldn't stop!"
Clocks are a human invention that are merely set to celestial positions. A clock on Mars would be different than a clock on Earth for its rotation is different as is its orbit around the sun. If I were to sit here in my dining room for the rest of the night the Earth would continue to spin on its imaginary axis inclined 23.5 degrees away from the plane of the ecliptic. The room would eventually lighten  with the morning sun and get brighter as the day progressed. If I found myself glued to the chair I would soon starve to death and the cosmic clock would continue to move with the synchronicity of the heavenly bodies. Everything is always in a constant state of motion and change whether or not it is organic or inorganic. The elements change at a microscopic level...Quantum mechanics looking for that elusive state of stability. Indeed! time is a relative concept!


    I finish my supper and cannot help but stare at that damn cuckoo clock. So much to do and so little time to do it. If only time would stop! It was a simple request aimed at the Gods of the universe who arbitrarily set the mechanism of time in relation to matter.